The secret joke of Kant's soul: emotions and moral reasoning [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~lchang/material/Evolutionary/Developmental/Greene-KantSoul.pdf <comment><USER2> In a legal context, Stephen Breyer makes a similar argument about the decisionmaking process of self-professed "originalists" and "textualists" on the Supreme Court.

Namely, that they make their decision based on their own preferences and then later come up with a rationalization, claiming that the decision was based on a strict principled interpretation. The rationalization then provides a convenient excuse, letting judges disclaim responsibility for their decisions or their effects, hide their true reasons, and deflect criticism.

2004 lecture: [http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/b/Breyer_20...](http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/b/Breyer_2006.pdf)

Book version: [http://amzn.com/0307274942](http://amzn.com/0307274942)

<comment><USER3> Much more at Legal Positivism: [http://www.iep.utm.edu/legalpos/](http://www.iep.utm.edu/legalpos/)

Note however that it's not the only academic theory of judicial interpretation, and despite its popularity, it still leaves a few gaps as a predictive theory.

Sure, it explains why justices tend to vote along ideological lines. Unfortunately, they often don't. Having abandoned any acknowledgment of legislative or judicial constraints, the theory has nothing to fall back on to explain those cases.[1]

Justices are most likely operating under multiple constraints in any given opinion. Some of those constraints are dictated by their approach to textual interpretation, just as some are dictated by other ideas about fairness or social norms.

[1] Scalia's liberal opinions are a fun read. They have Scalia defending maternity leave, asylum seekers, armed robbers, and members of the communist youth league. Often he's marshalling the same impatient sarcasm against the right as he more famously deploys against the left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is fascinating. The dilemma he poses at the end is something i have thought about a lot -

"How far can the empirical debunking of human moral nature go? If science tells me that I love my children more than other children only because they share my genes (Hamilton, 1964), should I feel uneasy about loving them extra? If science tells me that I'm nice to other people only because a disposition to be nice ultimately helped my ancestors spread their genes (Trivers, 1971), should I stop being nice to people? ... It seems that one who is unwilling to act on human tendencies with amoral evolutionary causes is ultimately unwilling to be human. Where does one draw the line between correcting the near-sightedness of human moral nature and obliterating it completely?"

The more I overthink and let the "cognitive" part take over, the more the question nags me. The kind of cognitive detachment it takes to ask these questions and digest philosophy is why most people avoid philosophy. Its not healthy to be too detached from your emotions. So it seems like by asking that question, empiricism and rationality have already gone too far.

<comment><USER5> "... is why most people avoid philosophy"

Billions of people discuss and debate morality every week at Churches, Synagogues, Temples, Mosques and Monasteries etc. I don't think its that people don't want to be asked big questions or told how they act is wrong and should be changed.

I would argue they avoid it because 20th century philosophers are either boring/abstract, too political or too preachy.

For example, postmodernism thought, Feminist philosophy and Green Philosophy all tend towards certain political agendas which it offputting to those who don't agree with the agendas. Modern philosophers also tend to be anti- religion, putting off most of the world's population (being lectured on how the concept of a God has been the source of all the world's problem for millennia is tiresome, as tiresome as you would find a charismatic preacher telling you that you will go to hell for being an Atheist)

There are in fact Atheistic movements towards creating moral/church- experiences centered around philosophy, one such example if the London School of Life.

[http://www.theschooloflife.com/london/](http://www.theschooloflife.com/london/)

I think it is very sad Schools of Philosophy, like those of Ancient Greece, no longer exist. Sadly, I don't think they could exist in today's outrage-driven cultural climate where online lynch mobs are on the hunt for someone to say something controversial.

<comment><USER6> My experience of religion as practiced deals very little with the "cognitive" (see article), and very much with emotions, such as gratitude, affection and reverence (as well as less positive feelings). It is rare that an appeal is made to syllogism rather than sympathy.

<comment><USER5> I can't speak to all religious traditions, I would say that in many Judeo- Christian traditions, that is not the case (and again, I can't speak for even a small minority of these traditions)

"Why do we do what we do?" or "Why do we believe this to be so?" are frequently asked and debated. There is an assumption that there are logical reasons for beliefs, due to physical, societal or psychological negative|positive consequences, even if those reasons are thousands of years out of date (not eating pork for example). Emotion can have very little to do with it.

On the other hand, there sure are many traditions that only emphasize feelings and emotions. I don't believe any is better than the other (each to his or her own).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> so many beliefs people have about morality rest on assumptions: my beliefs must be rational, founded on evidence, or else they are invalid. this insistence is highly destructive.

there is certainly a form of validity granted by axiomatic reasoning, but we have rejected things we can't axiomatize and generalize, as if anything uncomputable were not worth thinking of.

</comment><comment>===

in this article I explain a common (most likely false) assumption in most moral thinking:

[http://markpneyer.me/2015/06/25/morality-and-the- subjunctive...](http://markpneyer.me/2015/06/25/morality-and-the-subjunctive- ordering-hypothetical-situations/)

and this is a series of articles explaining a model of emotion and why it works the way it does:

[http://markpneyer.me/2014/10/19/a-model-of- emotion/](http://markpneyer.me/2014/10/19/a-model-of-emotion/)

<comment><USER8> Frankly, in your article you appear to only argue against deontology, while appearing unaware of any alternatives. Your actual argument is also inconsistent with your uncomputable claim. Specifically, your proposed "taking context into account" is completely computable.

Also, if you _were_ right that morality exists but is not computable, why would that change anything?

<comment><USER7> > Also, if you were right that morality exists but is not computable, why > would that change anything?

because principles as the basis of morality then go away.

making moral decisions becomes about looking at each _specific_ situation, and applying as much context as possible - instead of trying to say "well in general, X is bad".

<comment><USER8> >because principles as the basis of morality then go away.

I don't see why. Why can't I say "uncomputable function X is the basis for morality", and simultaneously believe that X satisfies principle Y? There's nothing about uncomputable functions that says you can _never_ know a value, and principles are useful even if they aren't always correct anyway.

>making moral decisions becomes about looking at each _specific_ situation, and applying as much context as possible - instead of trying to say "well in general, X is bad".

Why can't an uncomputable function have a rule that X is bad? It might not be computable in all cases, that doesn 't mean it can't have rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> gwern: care to comment why you've posted this? What in particular is interesting about it?

</comment><comment><USER10> And next, gwern, I suppose you'll tell us that things are made of atoms?</comment>


Matcha – A framework for building iOS and Android apps in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gomatcha/matcha <comment><USER2> I think it's really great to see a project like this coming out, as someone who loves writing Go on the server side, but has been grinding my teeth through learning JS to be able to do client-side work. That said, I would love to hear more about how a compiled Go app will handle three of what I see as being RN's biggest advantages:

1) Ability to quickly see changes in the simulator as you're modifying code (one of the main reasons I went with RN over ObjC/Swift, is I can just Cmd+R and boom, my changes are live in a second).

2) Pushing new updates remotely, without having to resubmit your app. Would Go being statically compiled, mean we can't ship bits of executable code for minor updates / bug fixes as we see fit?

3) Debugging is really nice on RN, because you get to leverage awesome JS debugging environments like Chrome DevTools. While I've not yet had a need for a fancy debugger with Go, I could see that as a big sticking point for teams trying to choose.

Nonetheless, really applaud this effort so far, and look forward to seeing more. Go's concept of goroutines seems much better suited to UI event handling, then stringing together a ton of promises and callbacks. And don't even get me started on the async keyword...

<comment><USER3> RN = ReactNative? Gentle Tech Writing reminder that it helps to spell out initialisms the first time you use them.

<comment><USER2> You're totally right, I'd go back and fix that if I could. Funny how a few months learning a new framework can make you forget how normal people talk :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm the author of this framework. I think Matcha has a really cool approach to building UIs. Everything is built on top of interfaces, so its very easy to reuse and customize components and layouts. Its not quite production ready but I can any answer any questions.

<comment><USER5> Thanks overcyn great framework. How you are bridging between iOS and Android. Can you provide simple example code that make me understand how you make things working and internal details.

It will help me to understand better. Any future plans to write blog.

<comment><USER4> The bridging happens through Cgo and JNI. bridge/matchaforeign.h contains the functions that Go implements that can be called by ObjC/Java and bridge/matchago.h are the functions that Java/Objc implements that can be called by Go. Everything else is built on top of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing with frameworks like this is that the time invested could be lost if the framework looses traction. I am very hesitant to use a framework like this for anything serious and business-oriented.

<comment><USER7> Thats true, however in the long term, we need a react like framework that solves cross platform development. React Native has lots of problems with navigation, the AirBnB team even stopped using it seriously.

I guess Kotlin and Kotlin Native (which runs on ios) could be a good started for building a KotlinReactNative, which allows creating an UI in a DSL based syntax that works on multiple platforms.

<comment><USER8> @TeeWEE,

Do you have any info on why Airbnb stopped using React Native? Would love a good read on why.

<comment><USER9> We have definitely not stopped using React Native! Not sure where you got that impression. We continue to heavily invest in it as well as native platforms and make a case by case decision for all new products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool! This might make it a _lot_ easier to get IPFS going on Mobile platforms .. there is already a shim for getting IPFS built and running alongside a native iOS app but it'll be much more interesting to do the whole thing in Golang ..

</comment><comment><USER11> Why would you want to do this? At what point would this be a better decision than using a Swift/Kotlin environment?

Why would we voluntarily choose an inferior 3rd party tool when superior first party tool exists?

<comment><USER12> I would love to use this at some point. I would also contribute towards the development of this framework. I love Go and I don't want to switch to JavaScript when I want to write a iOS/Android application. Everything has to begin somewhere. This is probably a first step to something fine.

<comment><USER13> So don't use JavaScript. That's a terrible idea anyway. Use Swift/Kotlin.

<comment><USER14> So I should just write my application twice? That's not really a solution.

<comment><USER11> If it didn't work with React Native and the much richer Javascript/Typescript world, what makes you think that Go will magically make it better?

I get that you like Go, logically (although emotionally, I can only feel confusion from such an idea). But no one has even remotely offered an idea what advantages Go brings to this table other than "I like it!"

Which is cool, but I loathe it. So unless there are compelling things in this framework (hence my question) this seems like a great way to use worse tooling and an awkwardly shoehorned language to fail to accomplish exactly what other frameworks have failed to do.

<comment><USER15> There's nothing wrong with exploration and improving language interop across platforms.

<comment><USER11> This isn't really answering the question though, is it?

On the basis of language, Go is a regressive and under-performant pile that people seem to love largely because of its nostalgia factor.

What about this framework helps to offset how awful Go is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I amazed by seeing this type of frameworks and code written by a single person. How can one person write this type of framework. I want to learn this. Anyone please provide suggestion how to make myself better like this.

How much time and dedication he devoted in this is really amazing.

<comment><USER4> Thank you, I appreciate that! I was just lucky to have saved enough money to take some time off and work on something I find interesting and think has a lot of potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the Conceptual Overview [1]

> The gomatcha.io/bridge package handles the interface between Objective-C and > Go. Go values become MatchaGoValue in Objective-C, and Objective-C values > become *bridge.Value in Go. Methods and functions can then be called on > these objects using reflection.

Does this mean that you can call any of the Objective-c frameworks from Go lang side? if so, and if working well that would be a huge improvement compared with react-native.

<comment><USER4> The reflection is limited to calling methods on objects. So it would be difficult to directly interface with Apple frameworks. You couldn't build closures or respond to delegate callbacks for example.

<comment><USER16> good point and that applies for both Objective-c and Swift?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious about something. Asking as someone who doesn't make a living slinging code, and who is kind of terrified of mobile development because of all the UI stuff (xcode makes me want to cry), in case any pro mobile devs want to answer: is the UI part the real pain point here?

It seems to me like it must be, rather than the cross-platform thing, because what people are producing seems heavily weighted toward "here are UI components you can use" (or even in the react native case "here's an entirely different way of doing UI, yanked straight from webland"). Whereas if it were just a matter of sharing a codebase across platforms, it seems like it would be easier to work on a compiler-side, e.g. by extending clojure, scala, etc. to compile to swift.

But maybe that's just my bias because I look at any ui code from anything and my eyeballs start to bleed.

<comment><USER4> UI is the difficult part in my opinion. iOS and Android take different approaches to building apps so even if you had a language that perfectly compiled to both Swift and Java, the code to build your views would end up diverging significantly without some sort of component library.

<comment><USER17> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What's the difference between this and [https://github.com/golang/mobile](https://github.com/golang/mobile)?

<comment><USER4> This is actually based on top of gomobile. Gomobile provides language bindings and Matcha adds a usable component library on top of that. It serializes Go data structures into protobuf, passes it through to iOS/Android and creates the necessary views. Matcha also does all the layout, event handling etc.

<comment><USER18> Ah, I see. That makes sense. Thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wasn't there a proposal to expose native functionality in browsers on iOS and Android? If that were to be finished it could make things like this and react native less necessary.

<comment><USER20> Why would Apple ever implement that? They've made their point of view on preferring native development (and being very cautious about what's exposed to the browser) very clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> can someone explains how this is different from ReactNative, Phonegap, etc.

I've never done production mobile app, just played with examples on iOS and Android, wondering if this is a good framework to play with and eventually use for production mobile apps

</comment><comment><USER22> Why did you choose Go over Swift? What would be great is to mix native views dynamic views.

<comment><USER4> You can definitely mix native and dynamic views. Theres an interface for registering custom views with the framework. It doesn't need to take over your entire app either. Matcha gives you a view controller, which displays the Go stuff, but that can be presented however you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How is that different to flutter.io (beside using GO) ?</comment>


Show HN: Kanye.rest – A Free REST API for Random Kanye West Quotes - <AUTHOR> https://kanye.rest <comment><USER2> I love Kanye West. I think you need brazen, arrogant fearless artists that think and say preposterous things in order to move the thinking of a society for the better or for the worse. He has a dozen songs that I simply love that are older but still on my playlists, and I love that he immerses himself in creativity.

Sure, he can be a colossal ass sometimes, but I still think he's an important part of our societal ecosystem. We need people like him in our pop culture just like we need Stephen Hawking, Maya Angelou, Muhammed Ali, etc.

<comment><USER3> It makes me sad that so many people let his ego run rampant. If anyone is in need of ego death it is him

<comment><USER4> If you listen to Kanye's music, he is highly self-critical and introspective at many times. I think this is a type of fearlessness, specifically the ability to be so publicly vulnerable (though I don't know if that's what GP had in mind).

Kanye's public image is reflective more of the pressures of his industry and how our celebrity culture depicts famous artists. However I think it goes beyond that to broader social and economic factors. Consider how many conversations there are on HN about dealing with imposter syndrome; if you compare Kanye's media portrayal and his music, I think there are strong parallels many people here could identify with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Remember when someone created a joke kanye cryptocurrency and then his lawyers threatened to sue?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinye)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully he never finds this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excellent. I guess I ought to use this post to plug the Command Riker as a Service (CRaaS?) which I put together a while back, which operates in a similar vein.

[http://www.bencollier.info/fun/programming/python/2016/01/09...](http://www.bencollier.info/fun/programming/python/2016/01/09/riker- service.html)

I suppose someone should put together a directory of these things at some point. Give it twenty years and we'll have a full universe of personality imprints (a la the McCoy Pauley) talking to each other over REST.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Don't HATEOAS the player. HATEOAS the game."

\- Kanye dot REST

</comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome now I can build my Kanye as a Service company and pursue my seed round. Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> KaaS

<comment><USER9> KaaS is powered by the latest AI on modern blockchains in multi-cloud environments.. we're going to change the world.

<comment><USER10> Imma let you finish, but first I need to tell you about this other blockchain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> (Potential copyright issue aside) It should do loops of KW beats as well.

Talib Kweli's "Get By" for example.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVtpXvzzXiA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVtpXvzzXiA)

</comment><comment><USER12> Just curious, how are you providing the free api? R you eating the cost?

<comment><USER13> The site appears to be hosted by GitHub, and the API is served by Heroku, which has a free tier with a soft bandwidth limit of 2TB/month.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hosting the site cost nothing. Using $7/mo Heroku server for API with HTTPS and custom domain. Firebase can quickly start to cost money. Domain around $32/year. So it definitely does cost money to run, but not much at all.

<comment><USER13> If you want to reduce your costs, you can have HTTPS with a custom domain on a free Heroku app by using Cloudflare. Why are you using Firebase to serve quotes? I imagine the dataset could number just a couple thousand quotes max, which is fine to serve from memory after loading from a file at startup.

Or if you're using Firebase as a convenient interface for adding new quotes, the app could update its internal cache of quotes once a day, without having to pay Firebase for each API call.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I realized that after it started getting a lot of traffic. The problem is I kinda just made this for fun and have no idea what I am doing. Do you want to contribute? [https://github.com/ajzbc/kanye.rest](https://github.com/ajzbc/kanye.rest)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why all this infra to draw random lines from a text file?

<comment><AUTHOR> Using Firebase to more easily add quotes. However, I did not anticipate this much traffic. As another user pointed out, I am probably going to need to cache the quotes to prevent an enormous amount of reads to the database. Feel free to contribute if you have good ideas :) [https://github.com/ajzbc/kanye.rest](https://github.com/ajzbc/kanye.rest)

<comment><USER3> Honestly a four-line PHP script that reads a text file or calls `fortune` is probably going to be way more efficient

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Elon Rust can't be that far behind.

</comment><comment><USER14> I love this. Thank you :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: how much did you save last year? - <AUTHOR>

Money is still not a topic that is openly discussed which is unfortunate as there is a lot to learn from others. How much did you manage to save (or loose) last year? <comment><USER2> Rule of thumb, if you are single, and still want to live a decent good life, you could easily save half of your after tax salary.

eg. if you make 110k a year, after taxes, 401k, health, etc... you are probably bringing about 60-k65k home.

You should be easily saving about 30k a year. If you are in expensive areas like SF, live with roomates, and adjust to it.

If you are an engineer making about 130k a year, you can upgrade to your own one bedroom and still be able to save about 35k -40k a year.

If you are frugal and really good with money, add 10k to those estimates.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Mattress? - <AUTHOR>

I just graduated from college, and I know its important to get the right mattress, office chair and shoes. For the mattress, I'm looking to spend ~ $500. What are some good ones around that price? <comment><USER2> I just spent three months researching mattresses - including trying out dozens of mattresses in stores - so this LazyWeb question is relevant to me because I know shopping for mattresses is a P.I.T.A. Mattresses are a very personal thing, though, so you may hate what I like...

I tried out everything from the cheapest mattress at Sam's Club to a $30,000 mattress. In box-spring mattresses, I liked the Vera Wang series from Serta...but that is way above your price range. (It isn't their highest-end line, but it is one their premium ones.) You definitely don't want a continuous spring mattress, which is what many of the box-spring ones are in your price range, unfortunately.

We tried several natural latex mattresses and hated them, so I was leery of trying a completely memory-foam one, but my online research said that memory- foam mattresses had the highest customer satisfaction ratings.

I ended up buying a memory-foam mattress from BedInABox that is actually better than the $4000 Tempur-Pedics I tried. I paid $7XX or so, but that was for a California King. I think you could find a smaller one for $500. They shipped the 11" thick mattress to my door, shrink-wrapped in a box. My wife also loves it...it is the first mattress we both actually like in our 12 years of marriage. I think it has all the upsides of the Tempur-Pedics, but none of the downsides (it's cheaper, the foam rebounds faster, and it doesn't get hot, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER3> W Hotels sells their beds through their website, and frequently have "employee only" deals (40-60% off) that become publicly available so often you would think it must be intentional. I bought their "The W Bed" queen set (box spring + mattress) for $705 about 4 years ago that way, and love it. I seem to recall reading somewhere else that it may be a rebranded Simmons Beautyrest, if that helps. As you point out, getting a great mattress and chair is well worth the initial cost.

</comment><comment><USER4> Room & Board makes some nice mattresses, at lower prices than mattress stores, but still somewhat above your price range: [http://www.roomandboard.com/rnb/subcategory/list.do?catalog=...](http://www.roomandboard.com/rnb/subcategory/list.do?catalog=room&category=rm_bedrooms&subcategory=mattress)

</comment><comment><USER5> I hear Costco has great deals on mattresses for around that price. I spent more than that because of the whole 1/3rd of your life argument.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> EDIT: Looking at the suggestions, I'm willing to spend ~ 700 I guess, cause I'll be keeping it for a while. More suggestions welcome!</comment>


Falcon Heavy Delays as a Burndown Chart - <AUTHOR> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/SpaceX_Falcon_Heavy_schedule_delays.png <comment><USER2> These is the least useless burndown chart I've ever seen, making it still useless.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how much of the delay was caused by cascading delays as a result of crappy scheduling. If you need X to complete Y and Y¹, scheduling gets pushed back for Z, Z¹... Zₙ.

Is there some benefit, some management strategy that involves operating in crisis mode indefinitely? How does management continue to be over-optimistic several times without doing the introspection to see that they're not making good estimates?

<comment><USER4> Everyday Astronaut has a good video explaining the reasons behind the Falcon Heavy delay:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOdoNQXQYv8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOdoNQXQYv8)

It was largely down to the design and requirements evolving over the years. Because the Falcon 9 itself improved and dramatically increased it's payload capacity, it became able to itself fulfil many of the missions that the Heavy was originally intended for.

The Falcon Heavy that flew yesterday was quite different to the one that was originally planned.

<comment><USER5> This is the highest-bandwidth exposition of FH I've seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> matt-attack Can someone explain this chart? I simply cannot understand it.</comment>


Tesla Doubles Its Superchargers with Massive Solar Stations - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-24/tesla-doubles-its-superchargers-with-massive-solar-stations <comment><USER2> What is with these headlines?

Tesla announced that it wants to increase their Supercharging capacity, which is pretty obvious considering they want to sell 5x as many cars over the next couple years.

I don't see _anything_ in the article about "Massive Solar Stations", outside of the fact that "some" of the new stations will be solar powered (just like some of the old ones were supposed to be).</comment>


Surprising magnetic effect of light discovered at University of Michigan (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://michigantoday.umich.edu/2011/04/story.php?id=7980

<comment><USER2> They goofed, see the comments on their paper ([http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v98/i9/e093901](http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v98/i9/e093901)).

namely

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=169089650815815794...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=16908965081581579446&hl=en&as_sdt=0,38)

and

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=274756171832259655...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=2747561718322596551&hl=en&as_sdt=0,38)

<comment><USER3> Prime example of why storing papers behind paywalls is a bad idea.

I can't read anything linked.

 _The authors then invoke Faraday 's law H r E= i! 0 and conclude that the integral on the left side of Eq.(2) is identical to the first integral on the right. The theoretical result claimed in the Letter is directly predicated on this conclusion. This conclusion, however, is valid only ..._

Continued?

 _where m (p) is the peak value of induced magnetic (electric) dipole moment and r ( " r) is the ratio of magnetic (electric) permeability (permittivity) of the sphere and the surrounding medium at the given frequency. Equation (9) in [1] is a consequence of Eq.(8): JM º¿ 1= ..._

<comment><USER4> This rendered very oddly in Chrome on OS X: [http://i.imgur.com/xFiNhav.png](http://i.imgur.com/xFiNhav.png)

<comment><USER5> PDF of first comment: [http://muri.lci.kent.edu/Publications/Papers_KSU/PPM_PRL99_2...](http://muri.lci.kent.edu/Publications/Papers_KSU/PPM_PRL99_2007.pdf)

The strange symbols appear because LaTeX use strange fonts with strange encodings, so the formulas look nice in the pdf but if you cut and paste them, and use a standard font to render the symbols then they are mapped to random characters in the standard fonts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hardly surprising. Explanation here: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpI6ikj1G-s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpI6ikj1G-s)

</comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone know what happened with this? I googled "magnetic effects of light new type of solar cell" but I only got press from 2011 in the results.

<comment><USER8> The title of the paper is: Optically-induced charge separation and terahertz emission in unbiased dielectrics.

The news release is completely out-to-lunch (eg _" Light has electric and magnetic components. Until now, scientists thought the effects of the magnetic field were so weak that they could be ignored._" Are you kidding? Light doesn't even propagate without the magnetic field) so I'd start by tracking citations of the original paper.

<comment><USER9> We know it's electro _magnetic_ waves, but as it says we tend to ignore the latter part.

Having just studied for (and passed! yay me!) my amateur radio license exam, I've been mulling over this common omission of consideration of propagating magnetics. Phase too: we're so focused on frequency that we overlook phase. Polarization is also underrated, with a study last year suggesting "infinite bandwidth" (so said news reports) when used creatively.

Revisiting basics can reveal wonderous things.

<comment><USER10> If you take a look at how QAM works mathematically, it's getting such wonderful results because it's using two carriers with phase differences to do everything. It lets you do some really cool things depending on how well you can recover that phase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Note that this from 2011. But it's still pretty cool when discoveries occur that weren't predicted by the models.

</comment><comment><USER12> It must feel good to discover something 8 orders of magnitude stronger than predicted.

</comment><comment><USER13> I emailed the author of the paper. Hope he gets back to us, this is cool.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The light . . . must be focused to an intensity of 10 million watts per square centimeter. Sunlight isn't this intense on its own . . ."

Just a bit of an understatement.

<comment><USER9> Start with full-on solar intensity of 1000 watts per square meter. 100x100 meters gives the power input needed. Focus that on 1m^2, then focus that in turn to 1cm^2. Sounds doable.

<comment><USER15> It's not that simple. There's a minimum beam size, and passive optics won't let you alter that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_beam#Beam_width_or_sp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_beam#Beam_width_or_spot_size)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> so were problems found with the tech so it was abandoned or what? hard to know where it's going if anywhere with no followup...

<comment><USER17> Welcome to academia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How does Michigan consistently have such crazy research going on?

<comment><USER19> It's typically in the top 3 public US colleges and top 20 overall. The average SAT score coming in is 1900 with over 25% of their freshman class arriving with 4.0 GPAs out of high school. So they have a pretty good program by typical measures.

Their advantage then over similar schools is the sheer size and funding. A school like Dartmouth probably has 'smarter' students enrolling on average, but Michigan's engineering college has more students (8,000+) than the entirety of Dartmouth (6,100). So take those 8,000 engineering students and add another 32,000 in the non-engineering tracks (many of whom are in sciences, medicine, mathematics, physics, etc.) and you're bound to produce some interesting research.

So a ton of smart students, but then there's the money... U of M has the 8th largest endowment ($8 billion) in the US and the 2nd largest research budget at over $1.2 billion per year. They spent $190mm on engineering research last year and over $550mm in the medical school on health / biotech R&D.

One could ask why they don't produce more than they do.

<comment><USER20> Realistically, the only things that matter that you mentioned are money (not the endowment, though, just the research budget, AKA grant money) and the facilities.

Undergrads are basically worthless (in fact, they may be a detriment because they drain resources from the professors and the grad students).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does this mean tractor beams can be made real? :)

<comment><USER17> They can already be made real.

A) Make sure your ship is bigger

B) Shoot a ton of highly charged electron beams at the enemy space ship to ionize their hull

C) Magnetize your hull to the opposite charge and bring in the ship

<comment><USER22> How does one go about decelerating the other ship before it smashes into yours?

<comment><USER23> D) Magnetize your hull to the same charge and bring in the ship

<comment><USER22> The other ship would have momentum in the direction Of you. I suppose you could swap your hulls charge to repell

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> this is 2 years old

<comment><USER25> Thank you for helping those of us unable to do basic arithmetic.</comment></comment>


Learn to code in 8 weeks with Bloc, an online bootcamp for would-be developers - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/26/bloc/

<comment><USER2> Probably being a bit curmudgeonly, but a lot of these "learn to code quickly" remind me of the joking around 5 minute abs and the like.

Yes, they will probably help you weave some html/css or understand CRUD apps, but I've yet to see one that will be helpful in understanding more than the basics. Smart people will certainly use this as a springboard to get in on the game and will learn more as they go along. But, depth in terms of debugging problems, knowing how to connect technologies (or craft your own solutions), scaling and the like take time.

I don't think we are at the late 90s stage of "you're a warm body? here is a job", but quick paths to coding, every tom, dick and harry being an angel investor, and the like do give me a pause.

I hope people do learn, contribute, and grow, but...questions persist.

<comment><USER3> Well, if you think about it 90% of web apps really are just CRUD apps. They're ways to make some bit of life easier or more fun, not complex pieces of programming.

So for many non-technical founders of startups, being able to make a simple CRUD app will take you most of the way toward a prototype.

<comment><USER4> "being able to make a simple CRUD app" does not mean the person has learned "to code".

<comment><USER5> "being able to make a simple CRUD app" makes them qualified for a bunch of jobs where employers usually look for people who "know how to code". On the short term, really learning to code (whatever that is) doesn't matter.

<comment><USER6> It's funny that those people get hired while some more capable people do not.

<comment><USER7> what are you basing this on?

<comment><USER6> Is this actually an impossible concept?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like this is kind of like a mix between codeacademy (learning to code online) and dev bootcamp (learning to code in person). The problem I have with codeacademy is that when I get stuck I don't have someone to immediately answer my question, which is unbelievably frustrating. On the other side of things dev bootcamp requires you to be there in person which just doesn't fit my schedule.

If these guys can actually merge the convenience of sitting at my computer with the human element of learning, I'll gladly drop 3.5K to learn web dev in 2 months. Are there any alumni of bloc on HN that can share their experience?

<comment><USER9> We (<http://devbootcamp.com/>) host the Bloc guys in our office, and work with them on a ton of cool stuff! I see them in constant Skype calls with their students, discussing all kinds of cool things. These guys are great.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Minor correction: we are not YC funded; I've e-mailed Jolie to let her know. I had mentioned that I started my previous startup in YC, so think that's where the confusion came from.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there some way that's not a ridiculously fawning news story? E.g., the claim that it's well worth the price tag, or that it delivers dramatic results?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can compare the hacker schools here: <http://blog.bloc.io/comparing- hacker-schools> \-- if you're interested in learning about the economics, I'd recommend reading Race Against the Machine: [http://www.amazon.com/Race- Against-The-Machine-ebook/dp/B005...](http://www.amazon.com/Race-Against-The- Machine-ebook/dp/B005WTR4ZI).

One of our students was just hired, and we've got another who just graduated on sponsorship from another well known startup as part of their hiring process. If you want a full list of the apps our students have built e-mail me at email@example.com.

The bootcamp is really what you make of it, although our focus is on building an application that you could do many things with: show an employer (who appreciates seeing code that you've written as opposed to a resume), show to a potential cofounder, or bootstrap it.

<comment><USER10> I'm more questioning the article than the program. I know we're not exactly living in a golden age of journalism, but this struck me as a puff piece.

That said, I'm also very skeptical of the program. I'm having a hard time thinking of a profession where programs like this wouldn't be entirely suspicious. E.g., "Become a veterinarian in just 12 weeks!"

I think somebody who wants to be seen as a journalist would ask some some questions about the apparent disparity. Or would at least refrain from endorsing something without demonstrating a little critical thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Learn to code in 8 weeks... Lol. <http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> Given that people who can already develop are not in any way guaranteed jobs, $3500 is pretty darned steep. How are you going to recoup that?

edit: Oh, I know. First you make a website which tells people they are going to learn to code...

</comment><comment><USER12> $3500!!!! I'll use that to take a course from Harvard thank you.

</comment><comment><USER13> $3500? I'm in the wrong business

</comment><comment><USER14> This smells in several ways. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER15> Love the Arrested Development reference.</comment>


Our Double Robotics Telepresence Robot arrived today - <AUTHOR> http://www.willdurness.com/tech/double-robotics-telepresence-robot-video/

<comment><USER2> Very useful video to see the tech in action.

One thing I wasn't prepared for was how slow and pointless it was to be navigating around the office workspace. Seems like such a waste of time to be rolling around the office in a regular workday, at a speed that seems so much slower than pedestrian traffic. My immediate thought was that it would make worlds of sense to have the bot run ROS and generate sensor maps of the office, so it could automatically traverse, and avoid objects, so I wouldn't have to pay attention to the mundane work of having to drive it around. At that point though, it makes me question having a driving around bot at all. Video conferencing drops you immediately into the location without the traversal anyhow...

Also, it def seemed to make some of the coworkers feel awkward and spied on, especially the impromptu discussion the driver lurked.

Interesting to see this all in practice!

<comment><AUTHOR> When they were expecting me, interaction was great. It's definitely unnerving some of them as more of our remote team is taking them for a spin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Glad you're getting value out of it but to me it seems slightly creepy and not very useful. I clicked on the link to the product and their video is even creepier.

<comment><USER4> How is facetime creepy? Is it the "radio controlled Segway" or the iPad stand?

<comment><USER3> I think it's the combination. Video conferencing is okay and I think interacting with a robot might be okay but this halfway thing is really weird. I'd rather not see someone's head floating around on a Segway.

<comment><USER4> Would it be less creepy if it had a midget-mannequin wrapped around the stand? Maybe it could be dressed like Tyrion from Game of Thrones?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really excited to see this kind of robotics become real. I wish we could have one of these to explore the office my company just acquired.

I've thought of adapting my Arduino self-driving car to be wirelessly- controlled, maybe by a RasPi. Use a WIFI USB stick and/or a cell-hotspot for connectivity. Then put a microphone stand on it & tape a webcam shield to the stand & SSH to connect to it. (The RasPi would make the project work better, as most of these pieces already exist/could be modified to work with it more easily than several Arduinos IMO)

</comment><comment><USER5> Will, I'm curious about the latency of this setup. Could you get someone in the office to control the Double while having the Double pointing at the computer screen? Maybe with a clap at some point so we can see the source of the sound and get an idea of delay? Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Our local workers used it that way today. No latency issues. Nobody is available to make a video of it at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am thinking that they should be loud when they move, simulated loud like an electric car, just to reduce the sneaky.

Also should have a very very pleasent ping sound for getting peoples attention and what not.

<comment><USER7> We attached a small bell to ours. A silent omni present robot was too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know if it's just me, but a vertical-line (similar to rear-view cameras in cars) that guides the operator of the robot could be really useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> While using it, I also thought it would have been helpful to display both cameras at the same time.

<comment><USER5> If I'm not mistaken, they're using a mirror to redirect the rear iPad camera for the floor view. iOS doesn't let you access both cameras at the same time so that's out of their control.</comment></comment></comment>


How will current market impact VC? - <AUTHOR>

The credit crisis has been an ongoing problem, but perhaps the peak of the downfall is yet to be seen gives this week's latest fallout.  Given the current market situation, this is certainly a point of valid discussion in the coming months.  How will this impact the VC market?  I'm hearing from various sources reporting on both sides of the coin, some even suggesting that VC investments may actually increase since they fall under a different asset class.
Here are some links providing input into this discussion.  What do you all think?  Perhaps this will lead to new and innovative ways of bootstrapping a startup in the early stages.
http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/02/venture-investors-grapple-with-slowdown-ahead/
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2007/11/how-will-toughe.html
What do you think <comment><USER3> Good question. I tend to agree with the AVC article.

In the medium term, the US economy is going to desperate for any productivity and efficiency gains. In this kind of market, this is sometimes one of the few levers.

So I suspect start-ups in these domains will get a lot of attention - <USER2> those around things like energy efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER4> it won't. or, at least, not the type of VC's that you actually want to get involved with.</comment>


Library computers can block porn—but Wicca? ACLU says no - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/library-computers-can-block-pornbut-wicca.ars <comment><USER2> Maybe she should browse the stacks of books that surround her for information?</comment>


How To Create A Minimum Viable Product - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/13/how-to-create-a-minimum-viable-product/ <comment><USER2> Does this guy know what the hell he's talking about? Here are some of the highlights. Anything else?

1\. "Bootstrap.js" 2\. "Heroku is built on top of S3" 3\. "Bootstrap depends on jQuery" 4\. "You no longer have to mess with sessions, logout scenarios" (talking about Facebook connect)

<comment><USER3> Also mentioned that all the subscription providers run on Authorize.net so you can just switch over there. Not true - sort of a random comment. Still, it'll be helpful for some folks in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I went through point by point noting why this post is nonsensical, but I have now come to the conclusion that this post is "Emre Sokullu's best development practices" and he needed a way to _sell_ the post and so he went with the _hip and happening_ startup phrase "MVP".

He seems to now have a clue about what the point of building a minimum viable product is... he also seems to be confused about which products are which.</comment>


Ask HN: I feel EMR (WiFi/cell) radiation. Do you? - <AUTHOR>

Recent study discussed here on HN says there is no visible link between cancer and mobile radiation. Nice to hear, but I painfully feel these damn electro magnetic fields and they aren't doing anything good. Holding radiating device, iPad with wifi for instance, in a few minutes I begin to feel accumulating pressure in a forehead which then stays for ~30min. With a cell it's better, I can hold it to my ear for several minutes before it starts. I am 33 and have no health issues. Is anyone else here experiencing the same? When you feel it you realize it's not paranoia.. <comment><USER2> I have the same thing, but only for cells - it starts after more than 5 mins of a call. Yet, I'm not sure whether it isn't just a nocebo - after all, I KNOW I'm holding that device. Maybe try to ask your friend to hold EMR device close to you but without your knowing about it ;) Share the results then.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, that's the problem! tried that and can easily tell if wifi is beaming very close to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should conduct a blindfolded, controlled experiment. Ask your friend to hold either a phone or a slab of plastic near you, for a few random trials.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course I done the experiments to neither fool myself nor others. I can blindly hold powered off iPad and one streaming a movie and can easily feel WiFi working.. With this post I am trying to find out whether there are other people on HN who can definitely feel EMR or if it's still rare among the tech crowd.</comment></comment>


Decision Laundering as a Service - <AUTHOR> https://svonava.com/post/167228097148/decision-laundering-as-a-service <comment><AUTHOR> A short piece of satire on the dangers of deploying ML/AI into production.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to look for junior level remote positions? - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone. To the point: I want to become a good programmer.
This year I went to a bootcamp and spent the rest of 2018 writing full-stack apps for my personal use/development. I've been using Linux on the desktop since 2006, and I am comfortable using new technologies and languages whenever needed. I believe and have been told by people in the industry that I am qualified for a junior or level 2 position as a software engineer. Getting a job seems like the obvious next step to keep accumulating experience, but there are two obstacles:
* I can only work remote, for a variety of reasons, and
* I am not a Western citizen, which I believe disqualifies me from working for companies in the EU or North America.
I am not interested in what the salary might be: what I am looking for is experience and tasks with which to fill my days and occupy my mind. With this in mind, how do you think should I go about finding a 'job' under these circumstances, if its even feasible? I considered opening up shop by myself and offering pro-bono services to local charities/NGOs, but I feel like it would be an inefficient learning environment. Is it feasible to find a full-time 'post' in an open source project? Or does open-source work asynchronously as opposed to having team dynamics?
I don't even know where to begin looking for the answers to my questions.
tldr: third-world citizen wants a remote job, doesn't know where to look, has no prior work experience but is unconcerned with the salary, how to approach this situation?
Thank you <comment><USER2> I am in the (slow) process to create database binding for RediSQL ([https://redisql.com](https://redisql.com)) for several different languages.

My lack of time make it impossible for me to work on these projects but if you are interested I can definitely arrange something!

Eventually I was hoping to release SQL bindings for python, golang and maybe Ruby but any language will do. For each of those I will be able to pay just 200€ that I know is a misery but I can't afford much more.

All the code will be open source, there won't really be deadlines, and is just going to be an informal thing.

If you or anybody else reading is interested feel free to hit my email.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can only work remote, for a variety of reasons - what are they? With a visa or some other arrangements you could work non remotely first, which would equip you better to working remotely later in your career. I am 100% remote now, but I believe the first few years non remote taught me a few thing about corporate culture and politics which are hard to guess from far away. If you gel with company culture well, that really helps, remote work or not.

If you start remote first, I don't think you have a good chance of picking up those subtle, soft things

<comment><AUTHOR> >what are they?

I have a disability. On-site work decreases my quality of life too much for the trade-off to be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You have a few options:

\- try contracting (online) , have a portfolio to show clients of projects you worked on, charge a low rate to undercut the market. Difficult part will be to sell yourself due to lack of experience.

\- find a remote job, very difficult due to junior dev status. Not many firms will hire a remote junior dev when they can hire non remote ones. You can maybe sell yourself but they might be disappointed at lack if experience

\- find a non remote job, not sure what tech scene is like where your based but sometimes you have to travel or move out of comfort zone to achieve your desired career and passion.

\- try another career outside IT, remote business admins etc are now a thing or whatever floats your boat

\- start your own start up, not easy, very risky and without experience it'll be difficult but maybe try solving problems in your local community or city and sell that.

</comment><comment><USER5> You start out doing customer support or something similar, then make your way into development once you get hired. Any of those remote job board sites like weworkremotely.com or jobspresso.co check to see if they're also hiring support [https://careers.hotjar.com/o/hotjar-customer-support- america...](https://careers.hotjar.com/o/hotjar-customer-support-americas) (note, says Americas, but that's just the timezone you're willing to work (EST))

Elastic Search is another company you could try, I assume you speak a second language this will also help for any of these entry positions

</comment><comment><USER6> There are a number of open source projects looking for contributors. I know wesnoth.org is one. The downside of contributing to open source projects full time is you will have to find alternative income.

</comment><comment><USER7> We just had one of our remote developers resign yesterday (moving into a new exciting role), so are looking to hire. Drop me an email.

<comment><USER8> Hey, I'm around Sydney looking for a role too! Just sent you an email. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you enjoy teaching others or helping others solve their programming issues, you can apply to be a mentor on Codementor ([https://www.codementor.io](https://www.codementor.io)) and start building your profile and experience there.

</comment><comment><USER10> Try Toptal. I know some people here dislike that company (just search for reviews), but I like it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Email me your resume, we operate in ad tech space.

We are based in Europe+Asia

Our team is 100% remote.

<comment><USER12> I am also looking for remote job, sent you resume. See if you can help.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you feel about having a mentor in your line of work? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN-ers I've been in the software industry for about five years and have worked as an individual contributor at companies big and small. Over the years I've found that while one's own real world experience is a great asset, having a good mentor helps in avoiding common career pitfalls.<p>So, I wanted to ask you all a question based on your experience level in the industry 1. As someone senior your line of work, will you be willing mentor a junior engineer? 2. As someone relatively new or intermediate in your line of work, do you feel that having a mentor would help you in your career? <comment><USER2> Yes, and yes.

I had great mentors early one. And I am doing mentoring today, while still having great mentors in my life and work.

There are almost no downsides. In most cases, everyone benefits.

People helping people grow, do more, be better, and all the basic stuff humans tend to desire and benefit from, is a net good activity. Basic.</comment>


Hilarious directions on getting rid of IE 6 (it's in the footer of the page) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newtoyork.com/

<comment><USER2> I've seen much funnier and less obnoxious in the _years_ people have been putting up little "Don't use IE to look at my site!" notices.

The punchline, of course, is that this appears to be a completely pointless warning; someone's taken the time to make sure that the front page, at least, looks _exactly_ _the_ _same_ in IE.

<comment><USER2> IE 6, that is.</comment></comment>


ReactOS 0.4.13 - <AUTHOR> https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-0413-released/ <comment><USER2> 20 years ago I followed the development of many alternative operating systems. BeOS, SkyOS, Syllable, Haiku, ReactOS, hoping someone will release something better than Mac OS or Windows. Many operating systems have died, the ones who didn't (Haiku, ReactOS) aren't doing particularly well.

Doing a modern desktop operating system from scratch is very hard and very resource intensive. But trying to reverse engineer one and implement it without having specs and defined APIs is way harder.

Microsoft needed tens of thousands of software engineers, UI specialists, software architects to implement Windows. Apple didn't have the resources to write OS X from scratch, they got many bits from FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux.

So trying to replicate Windows functionality and have 100% compatibility with Windows won't happen unless Windows goes open source. Which I won't be surprised to see in the future if Microsoft owns the rights to all Windows code.

<comment><USER3> > Which I won't be surprised to see in the future if Microsoft owns the rights > to all Windows code.

Which they don't - depending on what you count as being "Windows":

\- The zip functionality in Windows Explorer is licensed from a 3rd party (DynaZip[0]) \- Before it was removed in Windows Vista, Pinball was also from an external developer [1][2]

I'm sure there are countless other examples.

[0]: [http://www.innermedia.com/](http://www.innermedia.com/) [1]: [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=58...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803) [2]: [https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181221-00/?p=10...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20181221-00/?p=100535)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who here is actually using reactos? I try it once in a while but am never able to run my old legacy apps on it. Eg. games, accounting or other old windows apps.

<comment><USER5> Well it's not really meant to be used. It's nowhere near ready for everyday use.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it never meant to be used? Its development started soon after Windows 95 release, as we all see in 20+ years of progress not even close to beta

<comment><USER7> It's logical, Microsoft has more ressources and runs faster than them to deliver because they have more people and money.

You cannot catch a flying jet with a single engine plane but I admire the effort, it's well done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Big difference in USB drivers with the new release. I can actually get it to install now on a real machine now. Give me some more time to check it out further.

</comment><comment><USER9> I never heard of this one.. But really cool. When I read it first I thought it was some Linux distro customised to run Wine, but it looks like they went the full way from scratch to cleanroom re-engineer Windows. Wow! Nice effort.

<comment><USER10> yeah it's basically to windows what Linux was to Unix back in the day. hopefully some day it will be viable, but maybe it won't. there's only one way to find out

<comment><USER11> I think that by the time they become stable enough to use as a daily driver, no one will be using 2003-compatible software or hardware. If they're even using the hardware now, that is. I mean we're talking ten years and older.

I don't question why they're "bothering", but I do wonder why they haven't adjusted their compatibility goals to something more useful such as Vista or Windows 7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.kernelmode.info/forum/viewtopic6f46.html?f=11&t=...](https://www.kernelmode.info/forum/viewtopic6f46.html?f=11&t=5302)

[https://swapcontext.blogspot.com/2019/12/is-reactos-great- ag...](https://swapcontext.blogspot.com/2019/12/is-reactos-great- again-2019.html?m=1)

<comment><USER13> > Q: Why this isn't reported directly to ReactOS devs? A: Because I don't > value this project as worth for any kind of official reports. Twenty years > of unworkable alpha. Pff. This is my report. Part 1. You either fix your > ridiculous bugs or GTFO. This is how I work.

How pleasant.

> Second one is about "we never used anything from MS blah blah blah" is an > obvious lie for saving face and it is working only with partially brain dead > audience

This claim is made all the time but it does baffle me that despite all the work they put into showing how badly ReactOS sucks, they couldn't put a modicum of effort into the code theft allegation. I guess I must be braindead for not assuming it's stolen code.

All in all I think ReactOS is interesting enough that it is a bit unwarranted how pessimistic people get. Most of us have long realized it will probably never be a viable desktop OS and that is not really a big deal because it's still fun to mess with and read about.

<comment><USER14> > Most of us have long realized it will probably never be a viable desktop OS > and that is not really a big deal because it's still fun to mess with and > read about.

I feel the same about Desktop Linux, except I _don 't_ find it fun to mess with anymore.

<comment><USER13> Linux is a viable desktop OS. ReactOS is not. It's definitely going to come down to opinions, but the difference in my opinion is I am typing to you from Linux (and use _only_ Linux, no VMs, as my desktop OS, even at work) and I don't think anyone here is typing on a daily driver running ReactOS. I don't enjoy everything about desktop Linux, but in an age where Windows 10 and macOS feel borderline hostile I don't really see much of an option. I do at least think there's a lot of interesting work going on with Linux, like NixOS and GuixSD, that are totally worth exploring.

<comment><USER2> Windows and macOS just work and don't need constant tinkering and fixing stuff.

Also, Windows runs all software I need, desktop Linux does not.

<comment><USER15> > Windows and macOS just work and don't need constant tinkering and fixing > stuff.

I agree with this. After even finding the time to 'try out' many Linux distos and dual-booting Ubuntu for a long time, I keep finding myself always going back to macOS since the keyboard shortcuts just work everywhere without diving into the dotfiles or apt-getting a missing package to fix it or even Googling a weird X11 error that could be specific to my setup.

The last thing I want to do is end up spending days customising, playing around or fixing annoying issues with my computer just to get to work. I don't need to do this often with macOS and Windows. Some Linux distros however....</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Anybody here know a good DNS service provider? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys do any of you know of a good DNS service provider? Aside from GoDaddy.com are there any alternatives? recommendations please thanks.
edit Whoops sorry I meant domain name registrar.
<comment> mark-t I got mine from Yahoo! Small Business a couple years ago when they had a $3/year deal. I haven't seen anything like that recently. They seem to be a good registrar; the only thing I've wanted to do that I wasn't allowed was subdomain forwarding.

<comment><USER2> yes, i use Yahoo that made it hassel free

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You mentioned GoDaddy, but do you mean provider or registrar? If the latter, try OpenDNS - www.opendns.com (at least I think that's the address; I'm on my phone so can only have one window open at a time)

<comment><USER4> If the latter, I've been pretty happy with xname.org. Only complaint is that you can't publish SRV records.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use everydns.net - it's free.

If you mean registrar, I went through google. $10 gets you a .com, plus their web apps for the domain you register, which is a pretty good deal.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not clear on whether you mean recursive DNS servers, a DNS registrar, or a BIND host. Regardless: OpenDNS, Register4Less, and DynDNS's Custom DNS service, respectively.</comment>


Running a Startup? You're standing on the shoulders of giants. - <AUTHOR> http://owocki.com/2009/09/running-a-startup-youre-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants/

<comment><USER2> "Take some time and reflect on all the things that had to go right to get you where you are today."

Technology seems to be a natural result of evolution. So if you reflect on this statement, you can see that all of humanity is standing on the shoulders of the giant that is mother nature and billions of years of evolution.

Of course our technology does wonderful, even magical things. We've been working up to it for quite some time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a good point. We're standing upon dozens of advances in human evolution. Agriculture too.</comment></comment>


National Park Service Moving Regional Office from San Francisco to Vancouver - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/national-park-service-to-relocate-western-regional-office-to-vancouver-wash/ <comment><USER2> Vancouver, _Washington_ , which is at the opposite end of the state from B.C.</comment>


Show HN: Pelatra- an interactive mobile game to play while using cardio equipment - <AUTHOR> Pelatra is a game that makes cardio exercise engaging and entertaining. Users do not need any special hardware to play—only a phone or tablet is required. The front-facing camera of your device tracks the speed at which you are cycling/moving and detects any horizontal movement to allow you to steer. Your body movements give you hands-free control over your in-game character. Pelatra guides your workouts by exposing you to challenges that are overcome by changing your speed and direction. Visit our site (https://goo.gl/oNakLa) to watch a video of our prototype demo level in action. You can also sign up for access to the prototype by filling out the form on our homepage! <comment><USER2> Here is a play-through for reference. [https://vimeo.com/189210575](https://vimeo.com/189210575)</comment>


Marka: Icon transformations - <AUTHOR> http://fian.my.id/marka/

<comment><USER2> Looks like it could implement things like [http://material- design.storage.googleapis.com/videos/animati...](http://material- design.storage.googleapis.com/videos/animation-delightfulDetails-statusChange- example_large_xhdpi.webm) to an extent...

</comment><comment><USER3> I assume the transformation is not hinted, because e.g. animating ^ to double ^ (like chevron) would be (subjectively) better by cloning the ^ and shifting it down.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's it good for?

<comment><USER5> Implementing Material Design.

<comment><USER6> Is there a 'Material Design' recommendation towards mutating icons? I would guess not, because the sorts of tangible things in which it finds its inspiration _don 't_ mutate in place. (They might slide in/out/over/etc.)

 _update:_ I did find a suggestion that such mutations can be 'delightful details', at [http://www.google.com/design/spec/animation/delightful- detai...](http://www.google.com/design/spec/animation/delightful- details.html#delightful-details-delightful-details) – seems a bit of a stretch to me, a subtle, non-'material' UI change that's quite pretty but perhaps easy-to-miss or prone-to-user-error. I suppose as long as it's confined to toggles, as in the page's examples, the flourish is low-risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is nice and neat. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER9> love it! thanks for sharing.</comment>


Apple Cracking Down on Sites Selling Access to iOS 6 Developer Betas - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2012/07/08/apple-cracking-down-on-sites-selling-access-to-ios-6-developer-betas/

<comment><USER2> Why not just this into a business and charge fanboys $1000 to get the new thing before everyone else?</comment>


Hello, iPad. Hello, Cloud 2 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/29/ipad-cloud-2/

<comment><USER2> Is it just me, or does he not really say anything?</comment>


Ask HN: Tools to run, manage, track SaaS service deployments? - <AUTHOR> Every multi-tenant SaaS or PaaS (cloud) needs to track which user deployed which services, when, for how long. I'm seeking existing technology to do this.
Features:
* specify what services are available
* for each service specify the deployment steps (e.g. script) for creating, starting, stopping, checking health, removing a service
* upon user request or some other trigger, schedule a service's deployment steps
* execute and monitor status of deployment steps
* should have a cli and/or REST API
* track deployment status in a database for easy persistence
* run periodic health checks
My preference is to have a Python component, perhaps a Django app, but I'm open to any other implementation that is easily docker deployable. I have already implemented a Django app because last time I checked there were no ready made tools available. Not sure if I should continue investing in it.
PS: I know there are some potentially applicable tools, but they are either too specific in use case (e.g. rancher, terraform), or too complex (e.g. puppet, chef). <comment><USER2> Try [https://kubernetes.io/](https://kubernetes.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your response. I know of k8s, and it's great for what it does but not what I'm looking for.

What I need is the user-facing side of things. Say a community building web site offers a chat service as an option (and many more additional options). The user can activate the service from some UI, which then triggers one or several steps such as setting permissions and possibly deploying some component. Sure this eventually may trigger a k8s deployment, but obviously k8s is not a user facing application. The site still needs a way to track which user has activated which optional component and needs to track whether that service is operational.</comment></comment>


Facebook Supported 'Sex Trafficking' Law FOSTA to Cozy Up to Republican Critics - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/blog/2018/11/15/how-facebook-sold-out-sex-workers <comment><USER2> What is up with the influx of Facebook rumor posts to HN lately? There were literally 4 of them on the front page this morning. I dislike facebook as much as anyone else, but do we really enjoy this type of content on HN? I don't.

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming mainly spinoffs of the NYTimes article: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook- data-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia- election-racism.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm honestly surprised anybody cares what Facebook supports. They just in it for the money in the long run.</comment>


Where not to park in Cambridge - <AUTHOR> http://bostonography.com/2014/where-not-to-park-in-cambridge/ <comment><USER2> If need to be in the MIT/Central Square/Cambridgeport area, You can park near the border in Somerville between Cambridge and Somerville past Inman Square and walk about 15 minutes to MIT or Central Square.

If need to be in Harvard Square, you can park near the Harvard stadium in Allston and walk 10 minutes to Harvard Square.

Do you guys have any other parking secrets to share in the Boston area?

<comment><USER3> If you need to be in Harvard, you can do the same thing on the Somerville border off Kirkland/Washington St - I used to live in Somerville and do that whenever it was too icy/snowy to safely bike.

Also, I believe you can safely ignore HUPD parking tickets until you get ~20 of them, or if you want to register your car with Harvard for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> COMMENTING BY PERMIT ONLY (EXCEPT SUNDAYS)

</comment><comment><USER5> How does 72,000 tickets in 3 months compare with other cities?

Cambridge resident here. Cambridge seems incredibly ticket happy, right?

<comment><USER6> Well, over the river in Brookline they're issuing around 32,000 tickets every quarter[1], but have around half the population. Once you account for that it's still a little less than Cambridge, but then you would also expect Cambridge to issue more tickets - being a tourist destination there is more parking pressure, and more people unfamiliar with the area.

[1]: [http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/brookline/2014/01/brookl...](http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/brookline/2014/01/brookline_police_serious_crimes_down_12_percent.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Spoiler: at expired parking meters.</comment>


Cilk++ for Linux is available for download (multithread performance-sensitive apps) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cilk.com/multicore-blog/bid/7775/Cilk-for-Linux-a-great-stocking-stuffer

<comment><USER2> I remember seeing this earlier and my thoughts are still the same. This license scares me.

It tries to close a "loophole" in the GPL that I never considered a loophole. Consequently, we have a brand new license that I don't want to learn because it's mentally exhausting to be reading legal documents when I want to code. I bothered with the GPL because there was enough points of view to feel relatively confident in what was happening. I don't want to bother again.

I hope the painfulness of having yet-another-license outweighed the perceived slights from the loophole they tried to close.

I'm happy to be an early adopter of a new technology. But not a new license. No thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> do you distribute your work under GPL? If so, then you wouldn't see a change under CAPL.

<comment><USER3> GPL 2 or 3? The Cilk++ page says if it is "used by others" and not open source you need to pony up. This is perfectly acceptable by GPL2.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, I'm not clear- do you mean you distribute it under GPL2, or that GPL2 allows use without releasing the resulting work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone who knows about the thing tell me how it's different from OpenMP? Their little example of accelerating a loop, at least, looks much like a standard OpenMP case.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Cilk++ has nested parallelism that works and provides guaranteed speed-up. OpenMP has nested parallelism, but it is a memory hog and not reliable.

2\. Cilk++ guarantees space bounds. On P processors, Cilk++ uses no more than P times the stack space of a serial execution. In OpenMP, not so.

3\. Cilk++ has a race detector for debugging and software release. With OpenMP, you are on your own.

4\. Cilk++ has serial semantics. With OpenMP, you do not have this benefit – only a subset of OpenMP supports serial semantics.

5\. Cilk++ has a solution for global variables (a construct called "hyperobjects"). OpenMP does not.</comment></comment>


Mutation Testing: A Tale of Two Suites - <AUTHOR> https://codeascraft.com/2020/08/17/mutation-testing-a-tale-of-two-suites/ <comment><USER2> I've tried to get mutation testing going on my last few projects. Amusing how little faith/interest there is in this from most of my colleagues. Would be interested in hearing how folks keep this up in a project.

<comment><USER3> It's probably most important in language ecosystems like Ruby which seriously depend on test suites for catching bugs.

One way to view the problem that Mutation Testing solves is, there's no test suite for the test suite. And so there's no safety net to enable refactoring the test code. It's test suites all the way down.

Mutation testing solves this infinite recursion problem by automating the test-suite-test-suite creation.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I pitched it as a way to know how good your tests are at catching common bugs. Still no dice.

<comment> release-object Did you considered doing it anyway? If a one-off run reveals some previously unknown flaw in the test suite you could present that.

<comment><USER2> Apologies for not seeing this.

I have added it. It got removed for adding to the build time. Never really found many issues, so I couldn't argue to keep it. Did point out that the argument was essentially against testing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The logic of refactoring test code is very interesting: IMO one can't just do that, because it tosses out the guarantee that it still tests what one thinks it does.

So I actually break my application first to make the tests fail, and then refactor them while failing to ensure that they still fail. Finally, I undo my changes to the app code, and the tests should all pass again. I guess this is essentially a manually performed mutation test.

<comment><USER4> I do the same thing, either when refactoring test code or when I'm adding tests after writing the implementation. I've heard the manual approach referred to as "refactoring against the red bar"; see [https://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/09/20/refactoring- against-t...](https://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/09/20/refactoring-against-the- red-bar/).</comment></comment>